List of Anonymous Functions or Thousand of Classes

Question

I wish to create an online quiz that can ask any question from thousands of programmed questions. Each question is created via a function that is given an array of int whose values determine the exact question displayed. I have each question as a class:

public class AddingTwoDigitNumbers : IQuestion
{
    public string QName() { return "Adding Two-Digit Numbers" };
    public int[] QParams() { return int[]() {Random(10, 99), Random(10, 99) };
    public void Question(int[] values) {
        Console.WriteLine(string.Format("What is {1} + {2}?", values[0], values[1]);
    }
    public void Answer(int[] values) {
        Console.WriteLine(values[0] + values[1]).ToString());
    }
}

QParams creates the array of int (to determine exactly the question created), that is given to both Question and Answer to create the question and answer.

I want a List of questions searchable by QName but would rather not have to create (and name) thousands of classes all implementing IQuestion.

So here is my second solution:

public class Question
{
    public string QName { get; set; }
    public Func<int[]> QParams { get; set; }
    public Action<int[]> Question { get; set; }
    public Action<int[]> Answer { get; set; }
}

public class QuestionRepository
{
    public static Dictionary<string, Question> Questions = new Dictionary<string, Question>();
    public static void AddQuestions(Question[] qs) {
        foreach (Question q in qs) Questions.Add(q.QName, q);
    }
}

public class FirstSetOfQuestions
{
    static void AddQuestions()
    {
        QuestionRepository.AddQuestions(new Question[]
        {
            new Question()
            {
                QName = "Adding Two-Digit Numbers",
                QParams = () => int[]() {Random(10, 99), Random(10, 99) },
                Question = (v) => {Console.WriteLine(string.Format("What is {1} + {2}?", v[0], v[1]);},
                Answer = (v) => {Console.WriteLine(values[0] + values[1]).ToString());}
            },
            new Question()
            {
                QName = "Subtracting Three-Digit Numbers",
                QParams = () => int[]() {Random(100, 999), Random(100, 999) },
                Question = (v) => {Console.WriteLine(string.Format("What is {1} - {2}?", v[0], v[1]);},
                Answer = (v) => {Console.WriteLine(values[0] - values[1]).ToString());}
            }
        }
    }
}

So my question is which is better? Do I create thousands of classes, having to provide a name for each one, or do I create thousands of anonymous functions and a class that stores these using (I assume) delegates? Is there a problem with the second solution if I have thousands of questions, or even a better way to do this?

(Obviously the questions I wish to create are much more complicated than shown here, and involve fractions, algebra etc.)

Answer 1

Just to get you started with fluent syntax, throwing in some stubs and ideas in there as well.

class Question
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string QuestionFormat { get; set; }
    public List<Range> Args { get; set; }
    public Expression<Func<int[], int>>  ValExp { get; set; }

    public Question(string name, string questionFormat)
    {
        this.Name = name;
        this.QuestionFormat = questionFormat;
        this.Args = new List<Range>();
    }

    public Question Rand(int min, int max)
    {
        this.Args.Add(new Range(min, max));
        return this;
    }

    public void Val(Expression<Func<int[], int>> exp)
    {
        this.ValExp = exp;
    }

    public CompiledQuestion Compile()
    {
        // Generate args in the appropriate ranges
        // Evaluate the result with the ValExp
        // Return a new CompiledQuestion with the information -
        //    basically just replacing Args, ValExp with RealArgs, Val
    }

    public ICoolDataObject Save()
    {
    }

    public static Question Load(ICoolDataObject hmm)
    {
    }
}

class Range
{
    public int Min { get; set; }
    public int Max { get; set; }

    public Range(int min, int max)
    {
        this.Min = min;
        this.Max = max;
    }
}

It's almost fun, creating questions now:

new Question("simple addition",
             "whats {0} + {1}?")
    .Rand(10, 99)
    .Rand(10, 99)
    .Val(v => v[0] + v[1]);

You can obviously add some validation checks to avoid bad number of arguments due to late hours of work, and use double or decimal instead of int wherever.

Answer 2

Both approaches are wrong. I presume you are not going to have thousands of different types of calculations. You are only going to have a dozen or a few dozen different types of calculations, operating on a huge variety of data.

So, you need to normalize your data so as to end up with about a dozen or a few dozen different well defined calculations on a database of well defined data, end then write about a dozen or a few dozen classes, one for each kind of calculation, only.

You might think that this is too complicated, and you might think that writing thousands of classes (or delegates, it does not really matter) might be a lot of work but each piece is small and easy, but trust me, you will bitterly regret doing it this way as soon as something needs to change on the interface or the implementation of all of these classes, and most chances are that something will need to change at some point in time.